Saturday, June 17, 2006

He's going the distance

It seems to me that it's human nature to try and push limits. Some people do this in good ways, and end up with groundbreaking discoveries that better the quality of life on this planet. Others do it in bad ways and see just how much they can get away with and still avoid getting in trouble. Last night I was in the latter group.

I was on my way to a friend's house when my gas light in my dash turned on. It does that when I have two gallons left in the tank, which usually means I have about another 60 miles. If I'm on the highway. With this in mind, I figured I would have enough to get me to her house and back home without having to stop and fill up. The problem is that I stayed at her house later than I had counted on, and wasn't heading home until 1 a.m., so I didn't feel like stopping to fill up. I made it home ok, but thought how foolish it was of me to pass up gas stations when I knew my fuel was low just because I didn't want to stop right then.

This morning I realized how lucky I really was when I filled up my tank and it came out to 14.5 gallons, the exact amount that my tank holds. However, rather than just being happy to have made it home safely last night, I ended up being irritated at the fact that gas prices had dropped by $0.05/gallon between the time I filled up and the time I pulled away from the pumps.

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